The present disclosure relates generally to drying apparatus for drying items having moisture or water on them. Particularly, food items such as fruits and vegetables are often washed in preparation for consumption or maintained in a humid environment to keep the fruits and vegetables fresh, however, the washing process or the humid environment can leave the fruits and vegetables damp. Additional clothes such as bathing suits can be taken off in a wet or dampened condition where it would be beneficial to be able to remove some of the moisture from such clothing items quickly.
Traditionally, in food preparation, when an article of food has excessive moisture on the surface of the food, a person would manually dry the food by patting a cloth on the wet surface of the food to remove the food. The manual contact of the surface of the cloth to the surface of the damp surface of the food would transfer the moisture to the cloth. This process can be especially burdensome in certain applications such as salad preparation or for drying herbs where there are many pieces of food and each piece has a large surface area. The process of drying each leaf of lettuce manually can be tedious and time consuming using this method.
Conventional solutions for drying food items such as fruits and vegetables can include salad spinners and the like. Most implementations are large, bulky, require large amounts of storage space, and include fragile parts which are difficult to fix or replace. Other solutions require time for the moisture to naturally fall off of the food, which is ineffective for time sensitive food preparation. Other systems include a drainage device such as net, basket, or mesh which water can pass through and be captured by an outer container. Such conventional solutions can require a certain amount of skill or finesse in removing the moisture from the food and not reintroducing the moisture back onto the food. Other systems include only a carrier made of a net or mesh material that can hold items to be washed under a sink and allow water to pass through the carrier, but such solutions allow residual water to drip or splatter from the net or mesh carrier once removed from the sink.
What is needed then is a system and/or method for effectively removing moisture from items such as food without the difficulties and inefficiencies seen in other implementations.